Brendan Eich resigns as Mozilla Corporation CEO [Updated]

Chairwoman offers unequivocal apology with announcement: "We must do better."

Less than two weeks after drawing controversy over his appointment as CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, Brendan Eich has resigned from the position.

In a post at Mozilla's official blog, executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker confirmed the news with an unequivocal apology on the company's behalf. "Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it," Baker wrote. "We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better."

The action comes days after dating site OKCupid became the most vocal opponent of Eich's hiring. Mozilla offered repeated statements about LGBT inclusivity within the company over the past two weeks, but those never came with a specific response from Eich about his thousands of dollars of donations in support of Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that sought to ban gay marriage in the state.

The notice of resignation does not clarify Eich's future with Mozilla, a company he cofounded in 1998 and became CTO of in 2005. It also stands in stark contrast to an interview Eich gave to The Guardian yesterday, in which he defended his personal, political actions and said they would not get in the way of his work as CEO. "I think I'm the best person for the job and I'm doing the job," Eich said in the interview.

Update: When reached for comment, Mozilla declined an offer to either speak on the story or direct Ars Technica directly to Brendan Eich. Instead, a Mozilla spokesperson linked to Baker's blog post, then added a statement from Eich himself: "I have decided to resign as CEO effective today, and leave Mozilla," Eich wrote. "Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next.”